Exercises To Relieve Stress

People come to One Love Fit Club in Chino Hills, CA, for a number of reasons besides just getting fit. I have clients who are in great shape come in every day to stay fit and relieve stress. Exercise is a great way to help burn off the hormones stress creates. The hormones come from the fight or flight response that prepares your body for either if you’re facing danger. Today, fighting or running isn’t a logical response to many of the modern stressors, like traffic jams, angry bosses or an overdue bill, so your body never burns off the stress hormones and doesn’t return to normal. Exercise helps you do that.

Running is a great way to burn off stress.

What better way to mimic running in fear than running for exercise. Running is just one aerobic exercise that burns off stress hormones, but probably the simplest and most familiar. It gets your heart pumping and makes you breathe heavily. Other aerobic exercises, including brisk walking, will provide the same benefits as a run. Studies show that all types of exercise that gets your heart pumping and increases your breathing can help with anxiety, which often comes from stress.

Alternate your intensity for maximum benefits.

If you do a steady state run, you’ll get the benefit of burning off stress, but switching your run to a high intensity interval training—HIIT—-run, then back to moderate, can bring even more benefits. When you alternate your intensity from peak intensity to a moderate recovery intensity and then back again, you work your body harder, burn more calories and increase the fitness benefits you’d get from a steady state workout. You can HIIT for any type of exercise, including walking.

Do something you enjoy.

Any tough workout, whether it’s weight lifting or calisthenics can burn off stress hormones, but so can fun activities. Riding bikes, dancing to fast music and playing team sports work well, too. While coming to the gym can help ensure you get a full exercise program, on your days away from the gym, do something you love that is also active.

• Exercising outside in nature can also relieve stress. It combines the relaxing aspects of nature with the stress hormone burning workout. Some find that grounding, exercising on the grass in bare feet, also increases positive energy.
• Burning off stress is important for mental health, but it also is important for physical health. Stress hormones, such as cortisol, are associated with the accumulation of visceral fat—abdominal fat—the most dangerous type to your health.
• You can get too much of a good thing. Doing tough strength training two to three times a week is important, but it’s not good every day. It actually increases your body’s stress because you don’t give your muscles time to heal.
• If you’re having trouble finding ways to burn off stress at home, turn up the music. Fast dancing and getting into the music is like an HIIT workout. You adjust the intensity continually.

For more information, contact us today at One Love Fit Club